Tuesday Tricks - Named Regex Groups

New in Ruby 1.9 is the ability to name capture groups so you don’t have to use $1, $2…$n. First a demonstration:

Ruby Pre-1.9

regex = /(\w+),(\w+),(\w+)/
"Mike,Pack,Ruby".match regex
"First Name: #$1"
"Last Name: #$2"
"Favorite Language: #$3"

Ruby 1.9.2

regex = /(?<first_name>\w+),(?<last_name>\w+),(?<favorite_language>\w+)/
m = "Mike,Pack,Ruby".match regex
"First Name: #{m[:first_name]}"
"Last Name: #{m[:last_name]}"
"Favorite Language: #{m[:favorite_language]}"

Note: If you use named groups, Ruby won’t process unnammed groups. So the following won’t work:

regex = /(?<first_name>\w+),(?<last_name>\w+),(?<favorite_language>\w+),(\w+)/
m = "Mike,Pack,Ruby,Colorado".match regex
"First Name: #{m[:first_name]}"
"Last Name: #{m[:last_name]}"
"Favorite Language: #{m[:favorite_language]}"
"Location: #$4"

Note: Even though Ruby won’t populate $4, it will still populate $1, $2 and $3.

This Tuesday’s Trick

Perl had named regex groups, now Ruby has them. Naming your regex groups can be extremely helpful, especially when the regex becomes complex. Use ‘em.

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